Maisie found me before I could leave. She came across the yard with two cups and handed me one without asking and stood beside me looking out at her own party like an overseer surveying a training camp.
"You came," she smiled. "Kazan owes me a barn."
"A barn?"
"He's going to build me a she-shack." I wasn't brave enough to ask whatthatwas. She barely came up to my elbow, and she'd lost every bit of the flinch she'd worn when she arrived here; she stood next to a former arena gladiator in the dark and felt no need to watch his hands. "She's something, isn't she? Chloe. People look at her and see a party. She's the most loyal person I've ever known and the worst at letting anyone be loyal back."
"Why are you telling me this?"
"No reason." Maisie's hazel eyes were entirely too knowing. "Can't a girl gush about her bestie?"
I didn't dignify that. A minor commotion at the goat pen saved me. One of the glow-goats had got its head wedged in the fence rails, bleating murder, and a couple of the young males were standing around it, making it worse. I went over because it was something I could fix.
And it got me away from Maisie. Not that I would ever admit to the retreat.
The goat had panicked itself stupid. I got down on one knee in the mud, put one hand flat on its dumb, furious little skull to hold it still, and worked the rail wide enough with the other to slip its head free. It immediately head-butted me in the chest, the ungrateful thing, and then leaned its whole glowing weight against my knee and demanded to be scratched, forgiving me entirely the instant I was useful.
"Okay," I muttered at it. "Okay. You're fine. You were always fine, you idiot."
I scratched it behind the horn buds. Its eyes went half shut. Stupid, breakable, alive.
When I looked up, Chloe was watching me.
Me, alone, from the edge of the porch light, and the performance had dropped clean off her face for once and left something open and startled underneath, like I'd donesomething she didn't have a joke ready for. Something in my chest reached for her across the whole muddy yard and pulled so hard I had to put my free hand in the dirt to steady myself.
I stood up too fast and set the goat aside. Then I spotted Zarcal in the crowd.
Yes, that was it. Zarcal was the answer.
Zarcal had wanted a wife since the day we landed and would have climbed any mountain for the chance, and Zarcal was warm in a way I had never once managed to be.
I crossed the yard to him and didn't let myself look back at the porch.
"You should talk to her," I said. "Maisie's friend."
Zarcal followed my nod, and his whole face changed, went soft and hopeful in the firelight. He had a cup in each hand, but he barely noticed. "Chloe," he said, like he'd been building up courage to say her name. "She's something, isn't she? Theshapeof her."
"She's on her last placement," I said. "If no one takes her, she'll be sent home. She needs a male who actually wants this. Who'll be good to her."
"Since when do you care?" Zarcal asked.
"Can't I look out for a friend?"
He looked at me a moment longer than I liked, the way the men who'd survived with me sometimes did, like he could hear the parts I wasn't saying. Then he looked back at the porch, ather, and the hope won out over whatever he'd half-heard, the way hope does in men who've been starving for it.
"I've been on this rock five years watching," he said, quiet, not bitter, just true. "I'd be good to her, Lorkin. I'd be glad every day. You don't know what that's worth till you've gone without it."
"I know," I said, which was the truest thing I'd said all night and the one he was least equipped to hear.
"I'll talk to her," he said.
"Good," I said.
3
CHLOE
I watcheda seven-foot killing machine save a goat, and it worked on me on contact.
